Dr. Ruaidhrí Neavyn:

To be fair, the Deputy has hit the nail on the head. The one item that could rectify these issues in the future is the presence of a disclosure policy or some form of whistleblower provision to enable people to take action. I can confirm that concerns were voiced over the expenditure, but the Deputy has correctly pointed out that it was incurred in the most senior office of the institute, for which the appeals mechanism was lacking in terms of any form of additional disclosure policy or whistleblower provision for those operating at a lower level within the organisation to actually express his or her concerns. I suppose there would be an automatic assumption that the chief office of the institute and the chief officer of the institute would be the guardians of the procedures and controls that should be in place to control expenditure in all offices of the institute. However, concerns were raised, but they were not acted on by the office of the president.